On the second weekend of January 2024, the amazing humans of BudgIT Foundation packed their boxes and ventured out of the Lagos metropolis to the calm and nature-surrounded Inagbe Resort, aka Snake Island, for a two-day strategy staff retreat. The retreat, a much-needed time to leave the four walls of our offices and nest as we review and plan for the year ahead, provided our team the space to unwind and rethink our core goals and commitments as an organization. The retreat, aptly titled ‘Reinforcing BudgIT’s Strategies for Innovative Programming, Sustainability and Securing Civic Space,’ was held from January 12 to 14, 2024.

As a foundation, in framing our 2022-2026 strategy, we prioritized learning as one of our guiding principles. In addition, we were vocal about using learning, continuous review, and communication as major tools for assessing our strategy delivery and measurement. We projected that our learning would be derived from well-structured monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) across all our processes and programs. We emphasized that we will encourage more staff to share failures rather than hide them so that lessons can be learned and used for pivoting to success. Our strategy is big on learning – derived from internal as well as external factors.

In 2023, we undertook structured monitoring, evaluation, and learning exercises, leading to the production of strategy review documents for both our internal and external use (engaging our partners and other stakeholders). This notwithstanding, we were keen on undertaking face-to-face staff interactions in a non-office setting to enable us to review our 2023 strategy implementation performance, interrogate the difficult issues and jointly explore the paths to addressing them, reinforce our gains, and reinvigorate ourselves for the year 2024. We were also keen to undertake critical security awareness exercises as a group to help better position ourselves to address the security challenges associated with our work as well as the threats to the civic space in general.

Objectives of the Retreat

The two-day staff and strategy retreat brought together all Nigerian-based (Lagos Headquarters and Abuja) staff to: 

• Undertake a strategy refresh to identify and strengthen progress lines, probe deficits and challenges with our tools and resources (financial and human), and advance paths to enhancing strategy implementation performance
• Treat through capacity-building sessions, prioritized personnel, and institutional fault points hindering strategy implementation performance 
• Security awareness and capacity enhancing exercises to strengthen staff and institutional readiness to mitigate security threats to our work and the civic space in general

Before the retreat, we envisioned that from an institutional and personnel perspective, we would be reinvigorated and sufficiently energized for the 2024 programming year, given the calm and bonding experience it would afford our team. In addition, we projected that staff would also feel a greater sense of ownership of BudgIT’s strategy and an enhanced personal commitment to drive the strategy toward more efficient results in 2024.

Core Retreat Sessions

The retreat was organized in the following sessions.

Setting the Agenda: Strategy, Visioning, and Review Session

The retreat’s ‘setting the agenda’ sessions covered the following principal topics spread over two days.

After the team’s arrival, rest, and lunch, the retreat set out with Joseph Amenaghawon, BudgIT’s Strategy and Growth Adviser, taking the first session on ‘Lessons From 2023 Strategy Implementation,’ where he recounted the progress and lessons from the year in review and how far gone we are on implementing our strategy. Right after that, Gabriel Okeowo, BudgIT’s Country Director, led the session on ‘Orchestrating Organizational Cohesion for Impact.’ He reiterated BudgIT’s critical competencies, which cover strategic planning and management, leadership and influence, people development, coaching and mentoring, change management, grant proposal and report writing, decision making, problem solving and proactiveness, project management, stakeholder management, team management and so much more.

BudgIT’s Global Director, Oluseun Onigbinde, led the next session on ‘Trends, Direction Visioning, Governance and Upholding Organizational Culture in the Context of Disruptive Innovations.’ He charged the team to be visionaries of the BudgIT agenda, be open to learning, adapting, and evolving in the ever-changing civic landscape, uphold the culture that has empowered BudgIT to come so far, stay alert to personal growth and industry trends that shape our work—design, AI, and speed—and ‘get active in our own rescue.’

Day two started with the ‘Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning: What More Do We Need to Know’ session anchored by Gabriel Okeowo and Ijeoma Chukwuma, BudgIT’s HR Lead, clarifying gray areas in the staff performance review process and steps for uniform response subsequently.

Gift Iheukwumere, BudgIT Head of Finance, presented on ‘Financing BudgIT, Ensuring Compliance and Protecting Our Assets,’ a session that re-emphasized the right and due process for all tax, money, and procurement-related matters. On ‘Projecting BudgIT to the World: Our Media Works,’ Oladayo Olufowose, Head of Media, Communication, and Creatives, gave a run-through of the team’s results.

Ayomide Oladipo, Head of Tracka, speaking on ‘Accelerating Proximity and Community Leadership in Focus Areas’ recounted the need for proximity and community leadership in the work they do and BudgIT’s landscape as a whole through six pillars: identify niche audience for programs and campaigns, identify community stakeholders, craft audience-specific campaign messaging, foster active stakeholders involvement, create consistent messaging distribution timeline and enforce the effective use of community champions initiative.

Leadership Session

Another paramount part of the retreat was the leadership sessions, of which there were two—one on the day of arrival and on the next day. For the first leadership session, Joseph Amenaghawon led the conversation on ‘Leadership: Stories from Within.’ It was a fun interactive session that allowed team members to reflect on their team’s leadership best and not-so-good qualities and share what had stood out or inspired them in the past year.

For the day two leadership session, Oluseun Onigbinde led the ‘Readings and Leadership Engagement,’ which covered reading and reviewing poems, stories, and thought leadership articles (most favored—The Woodcarver by Chuang Tzu, Wish Me What You Live Abroad, or Get Thee Behind Me, Buddy! by Pius Adesanmi and The Three Levers of Civic Engagement by Anthea Watson Strong) that reflected BudgIT’s vision, strategy and expectations from staff and leadership. It was a vibrant and engaging session that gave room for answers and inputs based on insights from the readings.

Security and Health Awareness Training Session

As an organization that prioritizes the health and safety of its staff and community, the retreat would not be complete without adequately empowering our people with the required skills and knowledge to protect themselves in and out of our workspace and often challenging civic territory. To this effect, ample time was devoted to security training ‘Keeping Safe in an Increasingly Insecure Civic Space: Options for Civic Actors’ and health awareness (First Aid and CPR—cardiopulmonary resuscitation), where the former was handled by Beacon Consulting and the later by BudgIT’s Head of Strengthening Health Systems, Dr. Biobele Davidson.

Programmatic Visioning

This session and the conclusion of the retreat included team agenda presentations by BudgIT team leads, namely Tracka—Ayomide Oladipo, Civic Hive—Temidayo Musa, Extractives—Engr. Adejoke Akinbode, Strengthening Health Systems—Dr. Biobele Davidson, Research & Policy Advisory—Iniobong Usen, M&E—Adewole Adejola, OGIP—Iyanuoluwa Bolarinwa, Media, Communication and Creatives—Oladayo Olufowose, and Technology—Segun Ige. Their presentations clarified the previous year’s experience and results and charted the direction and expectations for 2024.

Staff Bonding

As they say, all work and no play makes everyone dull (something along that line). Here at BudgIT, we believe in enjoying ourselves while giving our best. As such, the retreat boasted of really fun bonding activities for everyone according to their preference—movie night, gym, games (football, tennis, snooker), swinging, beach time, fruit hunt, swimming, and bonfire night. Through these activities, staff members exchanged stories, conversations, and adventures that have helped us know each other beyond the screens of our laptops and Google Meets. Staff were energized by the shared vision of the management and team leaders and timely ideas from diverse perspectives via discussions.

The retreat would not be possible without the relentless efforts and leadership of the logistics coordinators—Ijeoma Chukwuma, Deborah Onwubuya, Ibukun James, and Segun Olaleye—and the program coordinators—Gift Iheukwumere and Andrew Oaikhena.

As we begin the year, which already is packed with many programs, and as we continue to battle in unlikely terrains to bring the best of democracy, governance, and national good to Nigerians in particular and every country in our sphere of coverage, we are thankful to Ford Foundation and Luminate for sponsoring the 2024 staff and strategy retreat and happy to be back to doing what we know how to do best: fighting corruption, simplifying governance and leading the civic-tech landscape in Africa. Happy 2024.

P.S. If you were wondering if we saw any reptiles during our stay…lol, the answer is no. Hahaha.